Ggggrrrr Teamwork Vent

[florida-again]

I'm in my final year of college and take one class with people who are mainly in their first year.
So we are given some work to do. Nothing official or important, just some group work. I have a TON of important, graded work to do at the moment.
The girl I'm working with insisted that we meet up every day to delegate this work, and really turned a simple exercise into a time-consuming monstrosity.
So OK, I'm busy but I've worked double hard to get this work done to. Didn't see the point in arguing with her.
So we met on Friday and I'd done five pages of intricate work on it. I was VERY surprised to see that after all her 'planning' she'd done ONE LINE of work!
So I asked if she could do the rest of the work as I'd done so much. She said sure, but could I email her what I'd done so far.....ok.....so I did.

And I've just received this email:

Sorry I couldn't open the email you sent so just go ahead and write my bit instead - vuelos interacionales y nacionales, viajes temporales etc Hope you dont mind! Well done for what you have done already!!! it should only take a few mins and then print it off!! Thanks!

I'm NOT happy! I have so much work to do for my finals anyway! If I do this work I will have done the entire project by myself. But I don't have much choice as it's due in tomorrow.

I feel like I've been well and truly 'punked'!!!!

 

[Marseeya]

I despise group work! Sounds like you really did get punked. That always makes me mad.

I'm in a situation with group work right now myself. I'm an education major and in one of my classes, we're supposed to all work on a unit and integrate several different learning strategies into the unit. The prof said he'd prefer if everyone in the group had a different specialty (I'm English, we have an art, kindergarten, algebra, science, and social studies people). For some reason my group members had it in their heads that we would do an ALL MATH unit. Um, no, I don't think so! I spent about two weeks arguing with them about that, even getting confirmation from the professor, which they still misinterpreted. I got the impression they thought I was being a pain in the butt. The unit is due Tuesday and our group has yet to meet or do anything to get together on it. I'm panicked!

I hate group work.

 

[florida-again]

I despise group work! Sounds like you really did get punked. That always makes me mad.

I'm in a situation with group work right now myself. I'm an education major and in one of my classes, we're supposed to all work on a unit and integrate several different learning strategies into the unit. The prof said he'd prefer if everyone in the group had a different specialty (I'm English, we have an art, kindergarten, algebra, science, and social studies people). For some reason my group members had it in their heads that we would do an ALL MATH unit. Um, no, I don't think so! I spent about two weeks arguing with them about that, even getting confirmation from the professor, which they still misinterpreted. I got the impression they thought I was being a pain in the butt. The unit is due Tuesday and our group has yet to meet or do anything to get together on it. I'm panicked!

I hate group work.

It's just not fair is it? I think group work should be something that is included in teaching a class, but not something that gets officially graded. 50% of my grade from one class is from group work. And the work we present is then graded by our classmates and not our lecturer, I think this is totally ridiculous too!

 

[rigs32]

I'd forward her email to the professor along with a note explaining why your project is only half done and that you'd be more than happy to finish it if the professor would like, but knowing that you did 100% of it instead of the 50% you were supposed to.

 

[Joanna71985]

I HATE group projects! It's always a pain trying to get together to work on them. Last year there was a project I had and the others wouldn't meet AT ALL! I had to talk to my professor to explain, but luckily she let me do something else on the side for credit. This semester, however, I have THREE projects all due the same time- last week and this week. Did I mention that I hate group projects?

 

[Alaska Catdog]

I work at a college and the faculty in my program always assign group projects it's a very popular form of teaching right now. I asked one faculty member about the disparity when team members don't do their fair share and she said that almost always the other team mates cover for the non-producing team mate and she never hears a word until the grades are in. She said that if she was aware of team members who were not shouldering their work she would work something out with the ones who actually did do the work but she can't do anything if she doesn't know whats going on. My advice would be to talk to your professor about your lame team mate. Good luck.

 

[VSL]

Talk to the lecturer.. they should be understanding of the situation.

Any group work I've done in Uni involved all those involved agreeing on what % each person would get for the work. For this, you should be getting 100%!

 

[Marseeya]

I work at a college and the faculty in my program always assign group projects it's a very popular form of teaching right now. I asked one faculty member about the disparity when team members don't do their fair share and she said that almost always the other team mates cover for the non-producing team mate and she never hears a word until the grades are in. She said that if she was aware of team members who were not shouldering their work she would work something out with the ones who actually did do the work but she can't do anything if she doesn't know whats going on. My advice would be to talk to your professor about your lame team mate. Good luck.

I've had that happen before with great results. Since I've become a graduate student, I was in a group where one girl wouldn't work at all and our professor laid into her. The only thing that made me mad was that her grade didn't suffer for it. At the end, our professor had us grade ourselves! I'd rather she would have had us grade one another.

One thing I'm learning about in the teacher education program is how to teach cooperative learning rather than group work. If you do it right, every member of the group HAS to contribute something or the whole group can't succeed. It puts more on the teacher to make sure the work gets distributed more evenly. But it might not work so well for college students.

 

[dbarker]

Talk to your professor. Explain everything to him/her and include the e-mail.

When I was a senior (age 30) we were assinged a group project. Our professor took a profile of us before he assigned the groups. There were several of us "older" students. Each of us got stuck w/younger students. All of us "older" students had families and our groups wanted to meet after 10pm. We all went and spoke w/ our prof and he rearranged our group.

Professors really do want group efforts and they have no idea what is going on unless you tell them. So, speak w/ your professor and show him/her the work you have done so far. And good luck.